We’re driving them
to extinction
at an unprecedented rate.
The Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change
estimated that
20% to 40%
of the species
of organisms on Earth
are likely to go extinct
during the present century
on the basis
of global warming alone,
without even the other
factors coming into it.

Halo, eco-wise viewers,
and welcome to
Planet Earth:
Our Loving Home.
Today’s program features
world-renowned botanist
Dr. Peter Raven,
who is a professor at
Washington University,
USA and the current
president of the Missouri
Botanical Garden, USA.

Honored as
a “Hero for the Planet” by
TIME magazine in 1999 ,
Dr. Raven
has worked for decades
to conserve the world’s
plant and animal species.
He is highly respected
and is a member of
21 different national
science academies
across the globe.

Dr. Raven has won
many prestigious awards,
including
the International Prize
for Biology from
the Japanese government
and the US National Medal
of Science,
the USA’s highest
scientific honor.
Recently, he received
the 2009 Award
for International
Scientific Cooperation
from the Chinese
Academy of Sciences
for his contributions
to Chinese
botanical research.
He is also the author
of the internationally
best-selling textbook
“Biology of Plants.”

Vibrant biological
diversity is a sign
of ecological balance
and brings tremendous
benefits to humankind.
Unfortunately,
human activities
across the globe are rapidly
destroying key areas
of biological richness
including rainforests,
wetlands, coral reefs
and grasslands.
Scientists warn
that global biodiversity
is in grave peril
and thus the survival
of humanity is at stake.

The Lung Ying-tai
Cultural Foundation’s
MediaTek lecture series
featured a talk
by Dr. Raven at the
National Central Library
in Formosa (Taiwan)
entitled “Are We Saving
Them or Ourselves?
Global Action
on the Rescue of
Endangered Biodiversity.”
We now present excerpts
from an interview
with Dr. Peter Raven,
as well as from his talk
in Formosa (Taiwan) and
begin with him addressing
some of the reasons
why biodiversity is
so important to our planet.

To illustrate
the value of biodiversity,
I need only to refer to
the fact that all of our food
comes directly
or indirectly from plants.
One hundred three
kinds of plants
out of the 300,000 known
supply about 90% of
all of our food, rice being
the single most important
food plant in the world.

For two-thirds of
the people in the world,
plants are directly their
source of medicine and
therefore the supplies
of those plants
are very important.
Plants are directly
the source of medicine
for most people in
the East and South Asia,
for example.

The benefits of biodiversity
are truly immense.
It protects water
resources and soil,
supports nutrient storage
and recycling, and
mitigates climate change.

Organisms growing
together in ecosystems,
provide what are called
“ecosystem services”
such as protecting the water
running off mountains,
making it run off
in moderate form,
protecting the topsoil,
and providing pollinators
for many of our crops
like the fruit trees
that grow so beautifully
in the mountains
in Formosa (Taiwan),
like all the gourd squash
and melon crops
in the world.

And around coastlines
for example,
coastal mangroves
form breeding sites
for most of
the aquatic animals
and if they are removed,
then not only will
protection from violent
weather like tsunamis
be lessened, but also the
breeding sites will be lost.

According to
the latest Red List
of Threatened Species
published by
the International Union
for the Conservation
of Nature (IUCN), of the
47,677 species assessed,
17,291 are threatened
with extinction,
including 21 percent
of known mammals,
30 percent of amphibians,
12 percent of birds,
28 percent of reptiles,
37 percent of freshwater
fish, 70 percent of plants
and 35 percent
of invertebrates.

Human activity itself
is a combination
of population, levels of
consumption and
the particular technologies
that people choose.
We may have lost tens
of thousands of species
out of the estimated
12 million that exist.

But I think
the important thing is that
the rate of losing them
is going up very rapidly.
In the past,
in the geological record,
we were losing about
a dozen or so per year.
Over the last 500 years,
since people began
writing about well-known
groups of organisms,
we’ve been losing
hundreds a year.

And now we seem to be
losing thousands per year,
going up towards
tens of thousands,
which makes this by far
the strongest level of
extinction since the end
of the Cretaceous Period
65-million years ago
when the dinosaurs
disappeared and mammals
came into the ascendancy
and the whole quality
of life on Earth
changed radically.

A key threat to
the continued existence
of all species,
including humans,
is global warming.

Alpine ecosystems
are disappearing rapidly
as the temperatures rise.
So, all of that snow cover,
all of the glaciers,
all of the tundra
up in alpine habitats
are expected to be gone
by the end of this century.
Many more kinds
of organisms that
were widespread around
the Northern Hemisphere
before the middle
Miocene period,
in other words, before
15-million years ago,
survived in eastern Asia
than they did in Europe
or in North America.

And in cooler habitats
from the montane forest
upward, in other words,
from about 2,000 meters
upward, Formosa (Taiwan)
has many of those
relic species.
Looking at
the vegetation zones and
the annual temperatures
there, you can see
that a pretty small rise
in temperature Celsius
will change the conditions
radically.
And that’s why
looking at a map like that,
I can see most of the first
three or four categories
of habitats disappearing
by the year 2100.

After these brief messages,
we’ll return with more
thoughts on biodiversity
from Dr. Peter Raven.
Please stay tuned
to Supreme Master
Television.

The most complete nutrition
can come from plants.
We can get along
quite well without
animal protein and
the amount of the Earth
that is taken up to
feed animals is earth that
would be better served
preserving biodiversity.

Welcome back to
Planet Earth:
Our Loving Home
on Supreme Master
Television.
Our program today
features Dr. Peter Raven,
president of the Missouri
Botanical Garden,
who presented a talk
in Formosa (Taiwan) as
part of the Lung Ying-tai
Cultural Foundation’s
MediaTek lecture series
titled “Are We Saving
Them or Ourselves?
Global Action
on the Rescue of
Endangered Biodiversity”.

Dr. Raven feels
that if we do not change
the rapid depletion rate
of the Earth’s
natural resources,
humankind will soon
consume the entire planet
and erase countless plant
and animal species
in the process.

We are using 125% of
the world’s productivity.
If everyone really
did achieve the standard
of living of the
industrialized countries
at the present time,
which means the levels
of consumption
and so forth,
and if we were using
present technologies,
it would take three times
the productive capacity
of the Earth.

Dr. Raven sees logging
as a huge danger
to biodiversity.
Rainforests once covered
14% of Earth’s land surface,
but now only cover 6%.

Logging is one reason for
the destruction of habitats
throughout the world
and here’s where
I want to begin a theme
that is important to
what I’ll have to say and
that is that every nation,
every political entity
on Earth needs to watch
where it gets
its raw materials from.
For example,
in Mainland China
the logging of native forest
is now prohibited
to avoid flooding
along the major rivers.

Another destructive
practice is the capturing
and killing of wild animals,
which is leading to the
accelerated disappearance
of many species.

Many species will
simply be wiped out like
a number of turtle species
are virtually
on the edge of extinction
in Southeast Asia just
because they’re gathered
in such large numbers
to be eaten and many
other kinds of animals also
as you know.
And of course,
overfishing of most
of the major fisheries
in the world
is well-known and has
driven the vast majority
of commonly fished
marine organisms
to the brink of extinction.

The United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change
(IPCC) has stated
that if the average
global temperature
continues to rise,
disastrous changes
to global ecosystems
will soon follow.

To really stabilize
the world climate,
we’ve got to cut emissions
by 80% over
the course of the century.
The Kyoto Protocol, even
if perfectly implemented
would have resulted
in only a 4% reduction.

It will rise
about another
one degree Celsius just
from the greenhouse gases
that are already
in the atmosphere,
and at about a total of
about 2.5 degrees Celsius,
which probably
is the lowest increase
we could hope for,
uncontrollable
weather events,
big changes in
precipitation, and other
very unfavorable changes
will begin to occur
that we’ll find
very difficult to manage.

For example,
in Mainland China,
the three major industrial
zones along the coast
are expected to lose
75,000 square kilometers
of space as a result of
sea level rises associated
with global warming
during this century.

Among the solutions
that Dr. Raven sees to
the biodiversity crisis are
encouraging governments
and companies to
mitigate climate change
by limiting
greenhouse gas emissions
and by informing
our children
that nature is a fragile,
precious treasure
requiring protection.

Give them opportunities
to understand it, the
variety and beauty of it.
And give them
opportunities
to understand how
the elements in nature
fit together
with one another.
Only by doing that
thoroughly at all levels
both in your homes
and in your schools,
will we be moving
the world towards
greater sustainability
in the future.

The 2006 report by the
United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organization
(FAO) entitled
“Livestock’s Long Shadow,”
points out that
the livestock industry
is one of
the leading causes of
quickly falling
biodiversity levels.

The report states
that the livestock industry
plays a major role
in almost all the serious
environmental issues
on the planet,
including deforestation,
land degradation,
pollution, climate change,
sedimentation of coastal
areas and water shortages
-- all of which have
a severely negative impact
on global biodiversity.
Thus one crucial action
we all can easily take
to support biodiversity
is avoiding the consumption
of animal products.

The more extensively
people use vegetables
rather than animals,
the more efficiently
they’ll be using
the world’s productivity.
In our family we certainly
try to consume less
and less animal protein
and more vegetable
as we go along.

Be veg, go green,
save the planet!

Be veg, go green,
save the planet!

We sincerely thank
Dr. Peter Raven
for his dedicated efforts
to preserve
the Earth’s biodiversity
and sensitive ecosystems.
May the work
of dedicated individuals
like him
soon bring awareness
to our entire world
that we must act now to
save our planet’s diverse
plant and animal species.

For more details on
Dr. Raven, please visit
WUBio.wustl.edu/Raven
“Biology of Plants”
and other books
by Dr. Raven
are available at
www.Amazon.com

Caring viewers, thank you
for your company
on today’s episode of
Planet Earth:
Our Loving Home.
Coming up next is
Enlightening Entertainment
after Noteworthy News.
May we always
be filled with
the Divine love of Heaven.

There are many people
around the world who
selflessly contribute
to their nation.
One such person is
Mr. Najaf Mazari,
who founded the Mazar
Development Fund
in Australia to benefit
the residents of
Mazar-e-Sharif
in Afghanistan.

When I came here
I didn’t have any friends,
I didn’t have a family,
I didn’t have
a cousin here, nobody.
And the first thing
(I thought) is
can I help myself or not?
If I can help myself,
then I can help my family.
If I can help my family
then I can help my people
in Afghanistan.

To hear Mr. Mazari’s
inspirational life story
and learn about
his benevolent work,
please watch
“Uplifting Mazar-e-Sharif,
Afghanistan –
Najaf Mazari,
Founder of the Mazar
Development Fund”
airing Sunday, May 16
on Good People,
Good Works.